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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM NOVEMBER 09, 2009
The aftermath of Thursday's shooting spree at Fort Hood in central Texas continued to lead all three newscasts. It was still Story of the Day but did not attract the same saturation coverage (18 min total v 44 Friday, 41 Thursday) as last week. Attention turned to Major Nidal Hasan, the army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 of his comrades on the base. Hasan is now conscious in hospital and has retained a defense lawyer. The three newscasts led with news that he had come under intelligence scrutiny when spies intercepted his e-mails, even before he was assigned to Fort Hood.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR NOVEMBER 09, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
MAJOR HASAN E-MAILED HIS ONETIME IMAM The aftermath of Thursday's shooting spree at Fort Hood in central Texas continued to lead all three newscasts. It was still Story of the Day but did not attract the same saturation coverage (18 min total v 44 Friday, 41 Thursday) as last week. Attention turned to Major Nidal Hasan, the army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 of his comrades on the base. Hasan is now conscious in hospital and has retained a defense lawyer. The three newscasts led with news that he had come under intelligence scrutiny when spies intercepted his e-mails, even before he was assigned to Fort Hood.
The three reports presented the same basic information: spies monitoring radical Islamist e-mail traffic had picked up on Major Hasan's correspondence with Anwar al-Awlaki, his onetime imam at a mosque in Virginia, now in exile in Yemen. Upon hearing that it was Hasan who had allegedly committed Thursday's rampage, al-Awlaki's Website praised him as a hero: "How can there be any dispute about the virtue of what he has done?"
Those facts aside, the various correspondents drew divergent conclusions…
Listen to Pete Williams' measured take at NBC. He characterized Hasan's inquiry of al-Awlaki as "general, about the role of Moslem soldiers and was considered consistent with Hasan's job to counsel service members." Unidentified "law enforcement officials" told Williams that the e-mail "was not anything specific or threatening." As for the imam, Williams described him as "a radical cleric well-known to United States intelligence…an outspoken advocate of violent jihad."
Contrast that with ABC's Brian Ross. His unnamed "official" sources told him that Hasan's e-mail was "reaching out to al-Qaeda." Ross characterized al-Awlaki as "one of al-Qaeda's top recruiters…an American who operates an English language Website out of Yemen urging all Moslems to wage jihad against the United States." Hasan's communications were with "suspected terrorists"--plural--Ross asserted.
On CBS, Bob Orr lined up with Williams rather than with Ross, He reported that the content of the e-mails "appeared to be benign…asking for help on a research paper studying the effects of war on Moslem-American soldiers." The imam responded with "spiritual guidance; officials say there was no talk of terrorism." As for al-Awlaki, Orr did not report that he is an al-Qaeda recruiter, merely that he is "an influential voice, spewing anti-American rhetoric from his exile in Yemen…and he is an ongoing inspiration for radicals." Orr did not elaborate on how al-Awlaki "spews."
There is some sort of link between imam al-Awlaki and the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. It is not clear what: CBS' Orr called it "known connections" with three of the suicidal hijackers; NBC's Williams reported that two of the 19 "turned up at a San Diego mosque where he was then an imam;" ABC's Ross said that two of the 19 prayed at the mosque in Virginia where Major Hasan had also worshipped.
BEING SHOT HURTS All three newscasts followed up with the mood at Fort Hood. ABC's Bob Woodruff filed an affecting montage of bedside interviews with some of the 16 wounded soldiers who are still hospitalized at the Darnall Medical Center on the base. Check out Private Justin Johnson, who was talking by cellphone to his mother when the shooting started: "She told me to turn down the videogame." And Captain Dorrie Carskadon: "The next shot was in the hip. That hurt."
CBS' Dean Reynolds covered Major Nidal Hasan's convalescence. His lawyer questioned whether his client could get a fair trial "at Fort Hood or elsewhere." Meanwhile Reynolds called the army "clearly stung by revelations that such an apparently troubled officer, an outspoken opponent of US policy and an adherent to radical Islam, was being sent to the warzone." NBC's Mark Potter picked up on a different theory, that the trouble might not be Hasan's political ideology but his mental health: "In the wake of the shooting the army is facing hard questions about how it cares for its soldiers emotionally and about whether there were warning signs that the alleged gunman was suffering distress, which could lead to violence."
Not only is the accused killer a psychiatrist, CBS' Don Teague pointed out that three of those he killed were combat stress control therapists en route to Afghanistan. The army was already suffering from a shortage of mental health professionals anyway, with "just over 400 psychiatrists to treat nearly 550,000 active-duty soldiers."
EN GARDE FOR DINGHY BOMBS Both ABC and CBS claimed an Exclusive for their inside-the-Beltway reporting on Afghanistan. CBS filed from the Pentagon where David Martin reported that the still-unannounced decision about troop reinforcements to the warzone was a done deal. Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama has decided to deploy four more combat brigades, plus their support troops, a figure "close to" the 40,000 that Gen Stanley McChrystal has asked for. The deployment will be complete by the end of 2010 and that level of troops would be maintained "about four years," according to Scoop Martin.
ABC's Exclusive did not consist of new information. It marked Jake Tapper's success at obtaining a sitdown interview with President Obama. Non-controversially, Obama justified sending troops to Afghanistan "to prevent another 9/11" but then he added a much more trivial threat--"to make sure that we are not seeing another USS Cole."
ABC's Tapper did not ask the obvious follow-up. Is the President serious that he has to send 100,000 combat troops for at least four years to occupy Afghanistan to protect a USNavy destroyer from attack by a dinghy bomb?
ONLY NBC PICKS UP ON LOOMING ABORTION BAN The weekend's 220-215 vote in the House of Representatives to approve healthcare legislation received follow-up coverage only from NBC's Kelly O'Donnell. She called it an oxymoronically "huge but narrow victory" and outlined key elements such as a government-run public insurance option, coverage mandates for individuals and employers, a ban on pre-existing condition denials.
Burying the lead, NBC's O'Donnell turned belatedly to the "heated fallout over one controversial last-minute change." She warned that future gynecological plans, especially for the uninsured or the self-employed, will probably be forbidden from including coverage for termination of an unwanted pregnancy. "Democrats say that without that restriction on abortion it would not have passed the House. It was make it or break it."
ABC's Jake Tapper in his Exclusive with Barack Obama did not select abortion as his newsmaking healthcare question. Instead he chose Medicare. Some future Medicare spending will be diverted to pay for healthcare reform, Tapper pointed out. Does the President promise to prevent a restoration of those cuts some time in the future? "Congress needs to know that when I say this has to be deficit neutral I mean it," came the reply, leaving the door open to restoring the Medicare cuts as long as equivalent funds are raised by some other means.
CRUEL & UNUSUAL Now that Jan Crawford Greenburg has left ABC as its Supreme Court correspondent to go to CBS, ABC's World News has turned to Nightline for the services of Terry Moran. ABC was the only newscasts to assign a reporter to the Court's hearings on juvenile penal policy. At stake was a Florida law that allows judges to incarcerate teenagers for life with no possibility of parole. Moran introduced us to the case of a 13-year-old boy who raped a 72-year-old woman. He must now spend the rest of his life behind bars. "Does the Constitution command that every kid who is sentenced to prison for crimes where no one is killed be given some hope?"
FOLLOW THE DOUBLE BRICK LINE Obviously NBC brought Tom Brokaw back to cover the 20th anniversary celebrations of the opening of the Berlin Wall. The inside tip that put Brokaw on the spot before the wall's breach was the pinnacle of his career as Nightly News anchor. Not only did he return but Mikhail Gorbachev and Lech Walesa were also present in the "all-star line-up of Cold War veterans." Also there was Angela Merkel, now Chancellor of a united Germany, back then an East Berlin lab technician. CBS' Mark Phillips focused on a pair of Berlin sisters, separated by the Wall when one escaped from East to West in the trunk of a diplomat's car: "She did not think she would ever see her family again." They were reunited at a West Berlin train station precisely 20 years ago.
A reunited Berlin has seen so much development over the last 20 years that the imprint of the Wall is hard to see. ABC's John Donvan offered a tip. Look down. "If you see a double line of bricks that was it, the route crossing Berlin, a monument under foot."
The three reports presented the same basic information: spies monitoring radical Islamist e-mail traffic had picked up on Major Hasan's correspondence with Anwar al-Awlaki, his onetime imam at a mosque in Virginia, now in exile in Yemen. Upon hearing that it was Hasan who had allegedly committed Thursday's rampage, al-Awlaki's Website praised him as a hero: "How can there be any dispute about the virtue of what he has done?"
Those facts aside, the various correspondents drew divergent conclusions…
Listen to Pete Williams' measured take at NBC. He characterized Hasan's inquiry of al-Awlaki as "general, about the role of Moslem soldiers and was considered consistent with Hasan's job to counsel service members." Unidentified "law enforcement officials" told Williams that the e-mail "was not anything specific or threatening." As for the imam, Williams described him as "a radical cleric well-known to United States intelligence…an outspoken advocate of violent jihad."
Contrast that with ABC's Brian Ross. His unnamed "official" sources told him that Hasan's e-mail was "reaching out to al-Qaeda." Ross characterized al-Awlaki as "one of al-Qaeda's top recruiters…an American who operates an English language Website out of Yemen urging all Moslems to wage jihad against the United States." Hasan's communications were with "suspected terrorists"--plural--Ross asserted.
On CBS, Bob Orr lined up with Williams rather than with Ross, He reported that the content of the e-mails "appeared to be benign…asking for help on a research paper studying the effects of war on Moslem-American soldiers." The imam responded with "spiritual guidance; officials say there was no talk of terrorism." As for al-Awlaki, Orr did not report that he is an al-Qaeda recruiter, merely that he is "an influential voice, spewing anti-American rhetoric from his exile in Yemen…and he is an ongoing inspiration for radicals." Orr did not elaborate on how al-Awlaki "spews."
There is some sort of link between imam al-Awlaki and the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. It is not clear what: CBS' Orr called it "known connections" with three of the suicidal hijackers; NBC's Williams reported that two of the 19 "turned up at a San Diego mosque where he was then an imam;" ABC's Ross said that two of the 19 prayed at the mosque in Virginia where Major Hasan had also worshipped.
BEING SHOT HURTS All three newscasts followed up with the mood at Fort Hood. ABC's Bob Woodruff filed an affecting montage of bedside interviews with some of the 16 wounded soldiers who are still hospitalized at the Darnall Medical Center on the base. Check out Private Justin Johnson, who was talking by cellphone to his mother when the shooting started: "She told me to turn down the videogame." And Captain Dorrie Carskadon: "The next shot was in the hip. That hurt."
CBS' Dean Reynolds covered Major Nidal Hasan's convalescence. His lawyer questioned whether his client could get a fair trial "at Fort Hood or elsewhere." Meanwhile Reynolds called the army "clearly stung by revelations that such an apparently troubled officer, an outspoken opponent of US policy and an adherent to radical Islam, was being sent to the warzone." NBC's Mark Potter picked up on a different theory, that the trouble might not be Hasan's political ideology but his mental health: "In the wake of the shooting the army is facing hard questions about how it cares for its soldiers emotionally and about whether there were warning signs that the alleged gunman was suffering distress, which could lead to violence."
Not only is the accused killer a psychiatrist, CBS' Don Teague pointed out that three of those he killed were combat stress control therapists en route to Afghanistan. The army was already suffering from a shortage of mental health professionals anyway, with "just over 400 psychiatrists to treat nearly 550,000 active-duty soldiers."
EN GARDE FOR DINGHY BOMBS Both ABC and CBS claimed an Exclusive for their inside-the-Beltway reporting on Afghanistan. CBS filed from the Pentagon where David Martin reported that the still-unannounced decision about troop reinforcements to the warzone was a done deal. Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama has decided to deploy four more combat brigades, plus their support troops, a figure "close to" the 40,000 that Gen Stanley McChrystal has asked for. The deployment will be complete by the end of 2010 and that level of troops would be maintained "about four years," according to Scoop Martin.
ABC's Exclusive did not consist of new information. It marked Jake Tapper's success at obtaining a sitdown interview with President Obama. Non-controversially, Obama justified sending troops to Afghanistan "to prevent another 9/11" but then he added a much more trivial threat--"to make sure that we are not seeing another USS Cole."
ABC's Tapper did not ask the obvious follow-up. Is the President serious that he has to send 100,000 combat troops for at least four years to occupy Afghanistan to protect a USNavy destroyer from attack by a dinghy bomb?
ONLY NBC PICKS UP ON LOOMING ABORTION BAN The weekend's 220-215 vote in the House of Representatives to approve healthcare legislation received follow-up coverage only from NBC's Kelly O'Donnell. She called it an oxymoronically "huge but narrow victory" and outlined key elements such as a government-run public insurance option, coverage mandates for individuals and employers, a ban on pre-existing condition denials.
Burying the lead, NBC's O'Donnell turned belatedly to the "heated fallout over one controversial last-minute change." She warned that future gynecological plans, especially for the uninsured or the self-employed, will probably be forbidden from including coverage for termination of an unwanted pregnancy. "Democrats say that without that restriction on abortion it would not have passed the House. It was make it or break it."
ABC's Jake Tapper in his Exclusive with Barack Obama did not select abortion as his newsmaking healthcare question. Instead he chose Medicare. Some future Medicare spending will be diverted to pay for healthcare reform, Tapper pointed out. Does the President promise to prevent a restoration of those cuts some time in the future? "Congress needs to know that when I say this has to be deficit neutral I mean it," came the reply, leaving the door open to restoring the Medicare cuts as long as equivalent funds are raised by some other means.
CRUEL & UNUSUAL Now that Jan Crawford Greenburg has left ABC as its Supreme Court correspondent to go to CBS, ABC's World News has turned to Nightline for the services of Terry Moran. ABC was the only newscasts to assign a reporter to the Court's hearings on juvenile penal policy. At stake was a Florida law that allows judges to incarcerate teenagers for life with no possibility of parole. Moran introduced us to the case of a 13-year-old boy who raped a 72-year-old woman. He must now spend the rest of his life behind bars. "Does the Constitution command that every kid who is sentenced to prison for crimes where no one is killed be given some hope?"
FOLLOW THE DOUBLE BRICK LINE Obviously NBC brought Tom Brokaw back to cover the 20th anniversary celebrations of the opening of the Berlin Wall. The inside tip that put Brokaw on the spot before the wall's breach was the pinnacle of his career as Nightly News anchor. Not only did he return but Mikhail Gorbachev and Lech Walesa were also present in the "all-star line-up of Cold War veterans." Also there was Angela Merkel, now Chancellor of a united Germany, back then an East Berlin lab technician. CBS' Mark Phillips focused on a pair of Berlin sisters, separated by the Wall when one escaped from East to West in the trunk of a diplomat's car: "She did not think she would ever see her family again." They were reunited at a West Berlin train station precisely 20 years ago.
A reunited Berlin has seen so much development over the last 20 years that the imprint of the Wall is hard to see. ABC's John Donvan offered a tip. Look down. "If you see a double line of bricks that was it, the route crossing Berlin, a monument under foot."
